What do you think of this?

[Bryan_Loconto]

A company that contacted us for SEO ended up going with another company, because we already had an impact windows client and we make sure to be exclusive to our clients for the terms we target.

Over the past 5 years, we ended up over performing for our client and now they have so much referral business that they decided to cancel with us... Kind of a bummer, but we take it as a compliment.

Now that we are able to target those keywords again, we are looking into the site that contacted us originally.

Before contacting them we looked at their sitemap and this is what we found. IMO they are stealing money from this client. What are your thoughts? should we contact them and let them know the direction this company is taking?

[identifying information removed by Moz staff]

[crackingmedia]

Hi Bryan

It's frustrating I appreciate and I agree the SEO is not good, but I would just stay out of it, I don't think it ever pays to take an approach like you are suggesting and you have to be careful what you say as you need to guard your own reputation and let the other company's reputation stand or fall by the results they produce - or don't as the case may be.

If I was asked my thoughts in private by the company receiving the service then I would give them but qualified as "in my professional opinion", but I would even then be careful about what I said.

If this other SEO company fail then at some point the company which recruited them will get rid of them and quite possibly come back to you.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[KeriMorgret]

I've edited this question to keep it TAGFEE, especially empathetic to both the potential client and to their current SEO company. This can be a good discussion question when talking in general terms, but given how Q&A is visible to everyone and indexed, we need to pull out this type of identifying information.